|
 JODY MACGREGOR begins compiling a history of BRITISH INDIA (the band, not the colony), with help from frontman DECLAN MELIA.
Don’t worry, British India are young chaps so this history is only going to be a couple of chapters long and we’ll be finished in time for tea. It starts in the long-lost days of the early 2000s, when Melia noticed that his high school friend Nic Wilson had a guitar.
“Nic was the resident music weirdo,” Melia says. “That was his reputation. He was very much the loner and he got called a hippie for no good reason at all other than he played the guitar.”
After learning to play Bob Dylan and Blur songs on acoustic guitars, the duo added fellow classmates Will Drummond on bass and Matt O’Gorman on drums.
“Will’s taste in music was much mellower, he was one of those horrible Jeff Buckley disciples you meet at parties, whereas Matt is into the heavier stuff. I think his favourite bands would be Queens Of The Stone Age, At The Drive-In, Mars Volta.”
Pretty close to what you’d guess really. Early single Black And White Radio had a very QOTSA chugalugging riff at its heart, I note.
“I think Matt even said he was going for a Queens Of The Stone Age-y thing with that riff. I was trying to rewrite Juicebox by The Strokes at that time, but it didn’t really come out quite like that. That’s a good ear, Queens Of The Stone Age was exactly what we were aiming for.”
After I’m done congratulating myself, I ask about the first ever British India gig, which legend has it was a bit of a disaster.
“I think our first ten gigs were a complete disaster,” Melia says. “It was at this place called Inflation and it was the first night they had a live band, so that’s always gonna be good. We did a soundcheck and Nic had his guitar up really loud and that resulted in an argument and then we didn’t get to soundcheck because we were too busy arguing. But still, on stage we had a good time. There was no one there, like, my dad and Matt’s girlfriend and her friend. That was par for the course for the first bunch of gigs we did, but because we were so young as soon as we got a decent stage and people saw us we were the darlings of the street press for maybe a week and a half before they found the next young band.”
Yeah, that sounds like us. In our defence, it’s pop music that’s made our attention spans so horribly short.
“We got a bit of attention at the start, but really I think that was only because we were so young and we bashed our heads together on stage. We were quite energetic, ’cause I thought we had to be to make up for our lack of melody.”
The media attention and slowly building crowds led to label interest and the distant howling of A&R people scenting new blood.
“It was a horrible situation for a band to be in,” Melia says. “Where they don’t have a lot of songs, they don’t really know how to play, but they’re getting attention from people in suits because they have pretty faces and their average age is small. But we came through.”
Part of the credit for pulling through belongs to Harry Vanda. Fondly remembered as the guitarist from The Easybeats in the prehistoric days when dinosaurs walked the earth and sometimes doubled on bass, Vanda now shepherds young bands through their first recordings at his Flashpoint Music studio.
“To this day I don’t know why, but Harry did an album with us,” Melia says, demonstrating a lack of confidence at odds with the acerbic and brash grown-up-too-soon voice that comes out of the speakers when you listen to their music.
“The record took two weeks. It wasn’t a grand undertaking. It had no label behind it, it was pretty much done on Harry’s benevolence and there was a time after that, maybe for six months, when nothing happened and we didn’t have any gigs and there was no word that the record was gonna come out ... and I thought we’d fucking had it. Harry said, ‘If no label’s going to go with this’ – and I’m not surprised now they fucking didn’t – ‘We’re gonna put it out ourselves on Flashpoint. It’s going to become a record label and you guys are going to be the only band on it.’”
The rest is history. Well, more history. Guillotine came out and we loved it and so did the wireless radio people. The delay between recording and release hadn’t been wasted, and they had enough material ready to record a second album straight away. So they did.
“With Guillotine it was almost an unspoken credo that we wouldn’t do anything other than record the songs like the Ramones might record them, just lay them down. ‘Fuck that’s cool!’ With this one [Thieves] we weren’t perfectionist, but we were certainly taking our time. I mean it took eight weeks as compared to Guillotine’s two. That was a big difference. I think we were better at working with Harry; it’s difficult for four young, brash, arrogant – arrogant, so arrogant – confident/arrogant young men to hear ‘That chorus needs to be changed,’ or ‘No, not the chorus. That intro needs to be chopped,’ or ‘That verse should only be half that long.’ Especially me. I had a real fucking problem with that during Guillotine, but we learned to step back on this record.”
The result is Thieves, another album of post-grunge indie-pop/rock whatever. It’s more like borrowing than thievery, a mixture that sounds like it’s been inspired by everything they’ve heard in their short lives. Maybe they were born yesterday, but clearly they’ve been up all night.
“I hear a song and think, ‘That’s a kind of cool idea, that could have been explored more.’ I recall reading an interview with Damon Albarn and he was talking about the record Think Tank and he said, ‘I wrote this record coming off heroin and going out of a relationship ’cause I figure those two things are quite similar, weaning yourself off drugs or off a girl.’ I bought the record and it wasn’t like that at all. I just pictured it to be totally different. That’s another idea for a song that’s never been written ’cause God knows we’re not creative enough to come up with songs that have never been written by ourselves,” he laughs.
“I’m told, and it probably says a lot about my confidence that I need to bring this up, but I’m told that you can’t really hear the influences so much. Often I’ll mention them to interviewers and they’ll say, ‘I didn’t really hear that at all.’ Apart from your Queens Of The Stone Age, which I commend you for again.”
And now, all that remains is to close the book and wish them luck on the next chapter, which begins with a national tour.
“We never soundcheck and we never bring our own gear and I’m not sure you can pull that shit at the Tivoli,” Melia frets. “Also I’m worried that without the close quarters that venues like the Zoo and smaller afford you of being all crushed in together, I worry that it’ll lose some of its punk edge – the sweat and the throwing shit around – so I’m not sure how that’s gonna go. But that’s not a good way to talk up a tour is it? To say you’re dubious about it? Let’s ignore that and say it’s gonna be fucking mega.”
Catch the fucking mega BRITISH INDIA at the Tivoli on Friday, August 15 with support from The Protectors. THIEVES is available now through Shock.
|
| Comments are submitted for possible publication on the condition that they may be edited. Poster's IP addresses are logged. |
|
Be first to comment on this article
